OK, this site has been critical of Comcast in the past for their spotty service. However, yesterday, they really stepped up to the plate and came through with the assistance of social media.
On Monday night around 11pm, a storm came through the area and blew some branches across BGE lines plunging my neighborhood into darkness–no electricity, phone, cable, Internet, etc. The wires were down, branches all over. By 2am, BGE was on the scene.
At 8am, they had about an hour to finish up (trimming trees and replacing lines) and I headed to McDonald’s to borrow their WiFi. While there I called Comcast to report the downed lines. From past experience, one cannot depend on BGE to make those notifications consistently.
To their downfall, Comcast has no simple way to report outages on the web, nor do they make it particularly easy on the phone–they send you through a complex phone tree to have you troubleshoot the problem before they will talk to you. Finally, a Comcast representative, Octavio, came on and checked his computer and advised me that there were no outages in the area. When I explained that there were downed wires that I had just passed, he again told me that there was no outage. Time for Plan B.
I know that Comcast is VERY proactive on Twitter. I sent a simple tweet out at 8:42am:
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/eyeonannapolis/status/111056674399338497″]
And I got a response at 8:48am from Comcast Bill:
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/ComcastBill/status/111058249079472129″]
By 9:01am we were getting somewhere:
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/eyeonannapolis/status/111061350133923842″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/ComcastBill/status/111061480060891136″]
I sent a photo or two from my phone.
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/ComcastBill/status/111064781535969280″]
By 10am, a crew was on the scene. By 10:30am, television was restored. By 10:45am, telephone was restored, and by 11:00am Internet was back up and running.
Sure it was an inconvenience, but Comcast really pulled through. They get the whole social media thing and it works. Now, if they would only have someone review their website and phone tree.
Here is the outage that their computer said did not exist!
